<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>The Crossing by Dame_Lazarus</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24562153">The Crossing</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dame_Lazarus/pseuds/Dame_Lazarus'>Dame_Lazarus</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>To arms! To arms! [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Game of Thrones (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>AU: 7x07 The Dragon &amp; the Wolf, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fix-It, Gen, Mythology - Freeform, POV Jaime Lannister, angst &amp; feels, r/jaimebrienne</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-20 22:15:46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,027</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24562153</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dame_Lazarus/pseuds/Dame_Lazarus</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Here he stands, in one hell, looking back at another, preparing to follow Brienne to yet another still. But follow her he will. He will follow her to the depths of all seven hells.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>To arms! To arms! [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1775347</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>89</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Jaime and Brienne Subreddit Fan Creation Challenges</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Crossing</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I wanted to write this week, but it was hard to focus on my comedic romcom WIP with all that’s been going on in my city and country. So, have instead this long-simmering Dragonpit fix-it, combined with the r/jaimebrienne challenge #3 (myths). More on the myths after the cut. I plan to write out a couple of other little fix-its this universe during the course of this challenge (hopefully.)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In the bowels of a castle where he’s lived the worst moments of his life, Jaime stands in the shadows of long-dead monsters and tells his brother <em> no</em>. </p><p>No—he will not ask their sister for a cease-fire. No—he will not allow their enemies to come into the Keep, or even to the city. No—he will not ask her to join forces with the Targaryen girl and Stark’s bastard son. </p><p>No—he will not try to convince her of honor, of putting the people first, of thinking of mankind and life over death and extinction. He knows enough battle to know when a fight is futile. And he’d be a fool to let them anywhere near her, for both Cersei’s sake and theirs.</p><p>So he refuses his brother, and he leaves him there, in that hellish place beneath that hellish castle. He leaves him behind in the dark and strides to the surface, blinking in the sunlight glittering harshly in the castle’s open walkways.</p><p>A hand touches his shoulder. He spins around and catches Bronn off guard, the man lurching back from Jaime’s fury. </p><p>“That was a fool’s errand,” Jaime tells him. “Don’t do it again.” </p><p>Bronn nods, swallowing, but not moving his eyes away. He reaches inside his jerkin and pulls out a flat square of parchment, the hand that holds it and the empty one both raised up in surrender.</p><p>“I said no,” Jaime hisses. “I said no a thousand bloody times.”</p><p>Bronn thrusts the parchment toward him. “Look, I’m just the messenger. A giant fucking madwoman held a Valyrian blade to my cock and made me swear a fucking oath to give this to you when things went tits-up with your brother.”</p><p><em> When</em>. Not if. He takes the parchment. It’s not addresses to him, but he unfolds it, and inside, in an ornate, bold hand—</p><p> </p><p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <em>The three stones on the Blackwater. Meet me there at nightfall.</em>
  </p>
</blockquote><p><br/>“She made you, a sellsword, swear an oath.” He’s still angry, at everyone and nothing, but he feels a smile tugging at his lips. He wishes he could have seen it: Brienne’s righteous indignation, Bronn’s prickly refusal, his quick turn to panic and indignation and resignation when she held her blade to him and wouldn’t give an inch.</p><p>Bronn snorts, and it’s clear that the scene was everything he pictured and more. “Your taste in women is going to get us killed faster than this bloody war ever will,” he says, like the two things aren’t one and the same.</p><p> </p><hr/><p><br/>Jaime had told Brienne about the three stones on the Blackwater when she was last in King’s Landing, in those strange weeks after their journey in the Riverlands. They’d been outside, on a courtyard overlooking the dingy water, Jaime talking about nonsense so he could avoid talking about oaths and Sansa Stark. She asked him if anyone swam in that disgusting bay, and he’d laughed.</p><p>“I did once, and I regret it,” he’d said, telling her the story of the time he climbed onto the stones—really more boulders—during a hot night in his early days on the Kingsguard, and leaped in. He and a few other men-at-arms had left a tedious banquet, their shifts over in a changing of the guard; instead of sleeping, as they should, they stole away some wine and got drunk on the beach just out of view of the castle. There had been dead fish to greet him when he hit the water, and floating garbage, too, and he’d received a tongue-lashing from Barristan Selmy when he stumbled back to his chambers, drunk and stinking, that still made him cringe. But for one glorious evening he’d been one of them, not a Lannister hostage held apart. </p><p>He didn’t tell her that part, of course, though perhaps she understood. Instead he’d pointed the stones out to her, barely visible around the curve of the cliff on which the Keep stood.</p><p>As promised, she’s there, on the shore by the three stones, as the last of the sun slinks past the horizon. She stands with her back to him, leaning on one of the boulders, her light-blonde hair reflecting the blue of the night.</p><p>“You shouldn’t be here,” Jaime tells her, keeping his voice so low it is almost lost in the crashing of the waves.</p><p>Brienne turns to him. The dark garb of the North suits her: in a billowing black cloak, over her deep blue armor, she looks more like warrior of legend than a mortal woman who had once walked beside him.</p><p>“Neither should you,” she responds, after a moment. “But here you are.”</p><p>“You knew I wouldn’t agree to what Tyrion was proposing,” Jaime says. </p><p>“It was folly from the start. A good Kingsguard would never let his liege so close to the enemy.” Her eyes are fierce; her face determined. He remembers this look, from when they first met. He is even more in awe of it now.</p><p>“I’m not a Kingsguard any longer.” </p><p>“Nor I,” she counters, “but those lessons do not fade easily.”</p><p>Jaime lets out a breath and reclines on a stone himself, leaning on one elbow to face her. “What will you have of me, Brienne? Even if these tales from beyond the Wall prove true, I’ll not be able to convince Cersei to send our forces to help you fight it. She’d sooner arm the dead to take you out faster.”</p><p>Brienne’s eyes flash in the dark. “I surmised as much,” she says. “Lady Sansa’s recollections of her did not give me great hope for her cooperation.” Brienne has a gift for understatement. He doesn’t know what recollections Sansa had, but he’s heard the starry-eyed girl he saw with Ned Stark grew up to feed the Bolton bastard to his own dogs. He can easily guess where she learned such ruthlessness.</p><p>“The tales are true, Ser Jaime,” Brienne continues. “Come with me, and I’ll show you.”</p><p>“To what end? Have you not listened to a word I’ve said?”</p><p>“I’m not asking you to convince her of anything,” she replies, her voice rumbling and racing with pointed urgency. “I’m just asking you to listen to us about the threat and consider what can be done. You are a man of honor. I know you’ll want to do what’s right.”</p><p>She’s breathing hard after this, worn out by the strength of her own convictions. But she does not look away from him. She does not sag down in exhaustion. She just stands there, tall and imposing, holding his gaze defiantly.</p><p>“What you’re asking of me is treason.”</p><p>“What is treason, when faced with what’s right and what’s wrong?” she counters. “You’ve made this choice before. When you armed me and sent me to protect your enemies, to fulfill our oath. When you freed your brother before he could be executed for a crime he did not commit. When you killed your king rather than see this city burn.”</p><p>He has no more strength in him to argue. “Have it your way, my lady. I’ll hear the tales of woe from your king and queen. But I cannot promise I’ll be able to do more than that.”</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>The night is upon them in full as she leads him along the shore. A heavy fog rolls in, obscuring the moonlight and settling heavy on his shoulders. He can only follow her by the sound of the stones under her feet.</p><p>She stops at a rocky point, where a small white skiff bobs gently in the waves. <em> Is this a great trick, wench? </em> he wonders. <em> Have you been sent here to lure me to my death? </em> If it were anyone else, he’d have expected nothing less.</p><p>If it were anyone else, he would not have come at all. </p><p>She bids him to climb into the boat, and she quickly follows, graceful despite the moving of the water and the grandness of her form. </p><p>“Just like old times,” he says, flashing a smile. He raises his false hand. “Though I’m afraid I’m still not able to help you row.” </p><p>She huffs, a show of annoyance that might, if he stretches, be considered a laugh, and she pushes off into the water. Her oars part the waves silently, but briskly, and they sail out into the bay. The fog drifts around them, whispering. Lingering. He shivers.</p><p>“Dare I ask where it is that you’re taking me?” </p><p>She slides her eyes to his from her point of focus out ahead. “Dragonstone,” she answers. “Everyone is there, ahead of the summit.” <em>My, Tyrion had been quite confident in his scheme,</em> he thinks. <em>Mayhaps you’re losing your touch, brother, being so long away from the lion’s den.</em></p><p>“I can’t imagine they’ll be pleased to see me. Your new queen especially. It was not too long ago that I charged at her and her dragon with a lance.”</p><p>Brienne presses her lips tightly together. “I heard,” she says, stiffly. “That was foolish.”</p><p><em> Have you ever seen a battle, wench? </em> He’d doubted she’d made it back to Winterfell before the Battle of the Bastards, as folk are calling it now. He’d been glad of the distance, then. “I was ending the war,” he retorts.</p><p>“For you,” she says. </p><p>They row on in silence for a bit after that.</p><p>“The dragons,” he says finally. “They were a force unlike anything I could have ever fathomed. They razed my men to the ground. Hundreds of them. Burned a year’s worth of grain in mere moments. The battlefield smoldered like a ring of hell. I thought briefly that perhaps I had gone that way, instead.”</p><p>“The queen’s dragons will be a great asset in the battle against the dead,” she replies. She’s trying to sound firm, but there is a waver there, just a tiny flicker. Dragons burning crops meant for the people of King’s Landing is not like to be an honorable act of war per the lofty standards of the Maid of Tarth.</p><p>He lets silence fall between them again, resting back into the folds of the fog and the soft lapping of the water all around them.</p><p> </p><hr/><p><br/>Jaime hears the dragons’ roar before he catches sight of them, rising from the dark. He has heard tale that she has three, but from the water, they appear not as three monsters, but one monster with many heads. A many-headed guardian, holding the island for its queen with fire and fury. Fire and blood.</p><p>A spiked dark green head lowers down close to them as they approach. Its yellow eye glares at them, judging. Its jaws part in a mocking smile, one breath away from burning them, or devouring them. Even brave Brienne stills her oars and drifts motionless in the dragon’s fearsome thrall.</p><p>“I don’t think he likes me very much,” Jaime whispers, as the dragon’s hot, putrid breath wafts into his face.</p><p>The dragon roars. But it pulls back its head, up to meet another, and the two heads watch them, warily, as their skiff collides with the rocky shore at the base of the gleaming black island.</p><p>Brienne leads him through the mist once more, up a dark, winding stair. They ascend, together, the flowing black of her cloak and her proud shoulders his beacon. A new nightmare awaits—he is sure of it, with every rapid beat of his heart.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>The silver-haired queen greets them on her throne. Despite the hour, despite that they have come unannounced, she is dressed for battle, in the black and blood-red of her house. Written across her young, beautiful face is a challenge: charge me now, in my own castle, and you will not live to regret it.</p><p>“Kingslayer,” she calls, coolly. “I was told you had refused to come to our aid—to the aid of mankind.”</p><p>“I refused on behalf of my sister, the queen,” he says.</p><p>“The false queen,” Daenerys Targaryen challenges. He places his hand on the pommel of his sword.</p><p>Brienne steps forward. “Your grace,” she says, “Ser Jaime believes, as I do, that Cersei Lannister will not heed our call. But he is here nonetheless to hear of the threat to the world of men, and to consider what can be done.”</p><p>Jaime spies his brother, standing to the left of the assured new royal on the aged stone seat in front of them. He’s looking at Jaime like he’s not his brother but instead a mystery from the Isles of Asshai, improbably made flesh.</p><p>“You will stand against your kin to fight alongside us?” The Targaryen girl looks skeptical. Jaime doesn’t blame her. He feels the same way, a bit. He looks to Brienne, who regards him from the corner of her eye, not a trace of doubt in her gaze. Just confidence and faith—two things he is certain that he, above all, does not deserve.</p><p>“I will see the proof you say you have,” Jaime replies.</p><p>Tyrion looks up at his queen, beseeching, and she nods to someone standing at Jaime’s back. Like the dragon, she keeps one eye on him all the while.</p><p> </p><hr/><p><br/><br/>Lord Snow, now His Grace, King in the North, lights the last in a ring of torches in the yard on the other side of the castle. He steps back to stand in the small half-circle gathered there: Jaime, Brienne, Tyrion, Aerys’s proud daughter, a dark-skinned Essiosi and a stern white-haired man he doesn’t know named Ser Davos. Snow falls in line to Jaime’s left and faces the empty expanse before them. He’s grown from the forlorn boy he last saw on his way to the wall in the courtyard at Winterfell; now he’s a forlorn man, carrying a weight much heavier than wolf pelts on his shoulders.</p><p>“I suppose I must congratulate you on your elevation,” Jaime says to him, though he’s unsure as to why. “Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch and now King in the North. Not bad for a bastard. Though I imagine your sworn brothers were sorry to see you go.”</p><p>He looks at Jaime with Ned Stark’s righteous gaze. “I’m merely Warden of the North. We have sworn to Her Grace, Queen Daenerys,” he replies. Every word is a grave swipe of a heavy sword. He probably always speaks thus. “And I have been released of my vows to the Watch, though I continue their work to this day. We are the shield that guards the realm of men.” <em> Would that I could say the same</em>, Jaime thinks. The Lannister armies are a shield only to themselves.</p><p>Their chat ends as two men lumber in the clearing in front of them, straining to carry a large wooden crate between them. He recognizes them, he thinks: the Hound, scarred and churlish; the disgraced knight Jorah Mormont, faded and impassive. The dragon queen’s court is a haven for all the outcasts of Westeros, it seems. His sister would find that amusing, but Jaime doesn’t. He knows from Tyrion how far the rage of those cast aside can propel them to go.</p><p>Clegane and Mormont put the box down heavily. It seems to wobble once they have let go of it, but perhaps that’s just his imagination. They have one of the supposedly undead soldiers in there, he realizes. He hopes that just a rotting corpse will fall out, and that this will all be over. He can go back to thinking about just one war to die in.</p><p>Clegane slices through the rope holding the box closed, and out bursts the end of such hopes: a corpse, but living. A demon with holes for eyes. Rotting flesh. It twists with a sickening thud and scrabbles toward them, a rasping, gurgling scream tearing from its throat. </p><p>To his right, Brienne draws her sword. But before she can enter the fray, Clegane and Mormont are on the creature, hacking with blades and daggers, until the thing stills on the ground in front of them.</p><p>The gathered warriors, perhaps the best fighters left in Westeros after these years of war, stare at it and do not speak.</p><p>“This thing came from beyond the Wall,” Jaime asks, at last. </p><p>“Aye,” Snow says. “There are countless more. Their King—he can raise them, as many as he wants. He means to overrun the living. Wipe us out.”</p><p>“They swarmed my dragon,” Daenerys says bitterly. “They pulled him down and he lives no more.”</p><p>He and Brienne share a glance. If these things can kill a dragon, what good will their soldiers be against them? </p><p>Snow must see what’s on their minds. “We can fight them. These ones, they’re footsoldiers. We take them down with force and numbers. They fall to fire, to any ordinary blade if the strike is strong enough. And their commanders and their king—if we strike them, the soldiers they lead fall with them. They can be felled with dragonglass. Or dragon-forged steel.” He looks over at Jaime and Brienne, where their twinned swords stand side by side, between their bodies, at the ready. “You carry Valyrian steel. We can use that in the fight. And any men you can bring to hold back the army of the dead while we strike those who lead.”</p><p>“It’s a pity that your false queen will spare no men for us,” Daenerys says.</p><p>A voice rings out in reply to her from the shadows beyond their circle. “Perhaps we shan’t need to ask her to bring the Lannister forces North.” The man who speaks is familiar to Jaime, too, as he slinks up to where they are gathered. <em>So this is where you crawled off to, Lord Spider.</em></p><p>“Those men look to their queen,” Jaime says. “She is head of her house and they are pledged to defend it.”</p><p>“Certainly,” Varys replies, “but do they follow her? Or do they follow their Lord Commander?”</p><p>“So now you want me enlist other men to commit treason alongside me,” Jaime spits at them. “These men have families, you know. I risk myself, but they risk more.” Tywin would have ripped their lines from the ground, root and stem, and Cersei longs for nothing more than to live in their father’s image.</p><p>It is Brienne who steps into the breach. Her words ring loud and clear above them all. “And what of those families when the dead overrun us and come for them? Don’t they look to your house for protection from that, too? Did you not swear to defend those who give you their fealty?” Her eyes are blazing in the firelight, the hottest of blue flames.</p><p>“She won’t allow it,” Jaime insists. To Brienne, above all. “She’ll have the City Watch cut me down before I can even send the word to leave the city.”</p><p>“I hear her grace Queen Cersei has taken to drinking quite heavily in the evenings,” Varys says, as though he’s reporting on a new trend in fashion at court. The information is true, though he hasn’t the faintest idea how Varys still has enough eyes in the Keep to know how often she’s carried to bed just after sunfall, mind already under the tides of her Dornish red. “She may not even notice. And who’s to stop her loyal brother from raising their army to defend against a threat he’s only just heard of, beyond the castle walls? He would only be doing his duty, and so would the soldiers who follow him. I dare say no one would question what that threat may be.”</p><p>They are all watching him now. The smirking dragon queen. The grave Stark bastard. Tyrion, who has no hope whatsoever in his gaze. Davos and Clegane and Mormont, openly staring.</p><p>And Brienne. <em> What is treason, in the face of what’s right and what’s wrong? </em>  He wants those calm fires of truth and honor within him, burning through him like they burn through her.</p><p>He holds her gaze. And he nods. </p><p>“I’ll have to move tonight,” he says. “Bronn and I made it to look like I went into the city with him, but that ruse won’t hold for long.” Cersei may come for him, and she will not be waylaid with a quick excuse if she does not wish to be.</p><p>“Then we’ll move tonight,” Brienne affirms. </p><p>He hears Jon and Tyrion both let out quiet sighs of relief. Someone snorts back laugher, probably Clegane, the uncouth dog he’s always been. But all Jaime really hears is the crumbling of something long broken inside him.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>The Targaryen queen sends her Essiosi to clear the twice-dead man from the ground. Tyrion gives him a long, tortured look and a pat on the arm, then hurries off gathering him some gold and provisions. </p><p>Snow and the other men do not shake his hand, and they do not offer thanks. They’ll need more proof before they’ll have to stoop to that. Likely they only believe that any of this isn’t a waste of time because they have Brienne to act as his minder. They do nod at him as they leave the yard, though, which is at least something.</p><p>Again it is just him and Brienne, in the blue darkness. The fog has lifted somewhat, and he can see the fires of King’s Landing twinkling in the distance. Here he stands, in one hell, looking back at another, preparing to follow Brienne to yet another still. But follow her he will. He will follow her to the depths of all seven hells.</p><p>“Cersei blew up the Sept of Baylor with wildfire, with all her enemies inside.” He keeps his eyes on the water; he can’t bear to look upon Brienne’s face. “You were right not to trust her.”</p><p>“The ravens said it was an accident,” she says, horror evident in her voice. He bets her Lady Sansa didn’t believe that one.</p><p>“Oh, it was very much on purpose. My son jumped from his balcony rather than face what she had done. I rode up from the Riverlands to find the city on fire and my child dead, and her on the throne, smiling. I wanted to turn back and ride away again.”</p><p>“But you didn’t.”</p><p>“I couldn’t. I left with our army once, and look at what happened when I wasn’t there to stop her. If I left again, what new terror would be unleashed?” </p><p>She understands what he isn’t saying. What acts will she commit when he is gone for the North? But she doesn’t admit to that. “If the dead rage through the realm unchecked—what could be worse than that?” she asks. “We will stop that. We will stop the worst from coming to pass. I know it.”</p><p>And the rest? This is only one war of the wars to come. He thinks of raising arms against Brienne, locked on different sides of a battlefield. He thinks of her bleeding in the mud. His stomach clenches. There are always more hellish things on the horizon. But he puts it away for now. He has pledged to fight this simple battle: life versus death. And he will fight it, alongside the greatest warrior he knows.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>“One day I should pay you, for all this free transportation across the continent,” he jokes. He is reclining back as far as he can manage in the same white skiff, his legs stretched out between Brienne’s as she rows them back to the capital under the cover of darkness. At his back are several lumpy sacks, food and clothing, that Tyrion had packed in there before watching them push off. “See you in the North, brother,” he’d said, though he looked more at Brienne when he’d said it.</p><p>The woman herself does not laugh at his joke, just sighs heavily and keeps rowing. He can only grin back at her. How many times has he seen her like this, rowing determinedly toward a worthy fight? Her skin glows in this light, the moon high above them. A maiden fair.</p><p>“Lie back and rest, if you want,” she murmurs. “You’ll need your strength for what’s ahead.” He just shakes his head. <em>I</em> <em>have it</em>, he thinks.<em> I have</em> <em>it</em>.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>In both Greek and Roman mythology, there is a ferryman who carries visitors between the worlds of the living and the dead. In many stories he also requires payment for travel. There is also the famous three-headed guardian of the underworld, Cerberus. </p><p>Can you spot all of Jaime’s seven hells here? And how much do you hate the logic of that whole ‘Cersei will help us against the Others, because she’s very concerned for the welfare of her children and the realm?’</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>